LOS ANGELES – “I don’t think anyone knew
how much we loved each other,” Elizabeth Taylor said after Michael
Jackson’s 2009 death, reflecting the intense – if perhaps unlikely
– bond between the pair.
Taylor and Jackson shared a key formative experience in common:
they were both child stars who arguably missed out on a proper
childhood.
The pop icon and Hollywood legend were at times inseparable,
with homes near each other in the plush Bel Air and Beverly Hills
neighborhoods west of Hollywood.
After Taylor’s death Wednesday at the age of 79, the blogosphere
was alive with talk of them being reunited in heaven.
“She is probably up in heaven right now, going monkey shopping
with Michael Jackson,” said one blogger, referring to infamously
eccentric stories from Jackson’s life.
Taylor, who died of complications from congestive heart failure
in the Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles, was knocked sideways
by Jackson’s untimely death aged 50 in June 2009.
Tabloid reports suggested she was hospitalized with grief,
apparently confirmed when she said via Twitter: “I’m home from the
hospital sore, but intact. Of course I’m still grieving for
Michael… I always will.”
“My heart… my mind… are broken,” she said. “I loved Michael with
all my soul and I can’t imagine life without him. We had so much in
common and we had such loving fun together.”
Their friendship began in the 1980s when Taylor abruptly walked
out of a Jackson concert in Los Angeles complaining that she could
not see the performance or hear the music, according to news
reports of the time.
Jackson called Taylor afterwards in tears, reports said at the
time, but once she explained the reason for her exit the pair got
talking, and it developed from there.
“Then we met, and spent more and more time with each other, and
just became really good friends. Told each other everything,”
Taylor said in a 2006 interview, cited by Fox News.
They were united notably by what Taylor called “horrible”
childhoods, blighted by having become celebrities at a young
age.
Despite their 27-year age gap the pair were regularly pictured
together, including at AIDS charity events
which Taylor organized, and on red carpets in Hollywood and around
the world.
The Oscar-winning actress, arguably the last great star of
Hollywood’s golden era, is even credited by some as having first
called Jackson the “King of Pop.”
Taylor later defended Jackson from child molestation charges,
explaining that she too had spent nights with him at his Neverland
ranch, without anything untoward happening.
“There was nothing abnormal about it. There was no touchy-feely
going on. We laughed like children, and we watched a lot of Walt
Disney. There was nothing odd about it,” Taylor said, according to
Fox News.
Some say the actress, long dogged by health woes, never properly
recovered after Jackson’s death two years ago.
“He will live in my heart forever but it’s not enough. My life
feels so empty,” she said at the time, calling his friendship “the
purest most giving love I’ve ever known.”
Good or Bad, everyone will die one day.